The present invention relates to efficient use of intermittent renewable energy sources such as photovoltaic solar power.
From time to time in technological development circles new terms and phrases may come into use before the full extent of their possible meaning has been generally agreed. For example, the term ISDN (Integrated Services Delivery Network) was at one time coined to describe the possible technological future of the public telephone system. After many years, no developments under the ISDN banner had succeeded In capturing the imagination, leading to ISDN cynically being dubbed “I Still Don't Know”. ISDN has now been totally overtaken and obsoleted by IP routing and the Internet.
In the current decade, the term “The Smart Grid” has come into use to describe the future of the electricity network. The term seems most often to imply making the electricity grid able to accept a higher fraction of intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, but what that might do for the average homeowner is still a mystery, with many cynically predicting that tariffs for energy usage will increase as a result.
Likewise, the term “Smart Appliances” has recently come into use. As there is a great variety of electrical appliances, it may be difficult to ascribe a general meaning to, or behavior that would characterize a “Smart Appliance”. One feature of a “Smart Appliance” could be that it automatically adapted to the availability of power of different types or tariffs in order to minimize energy consumption or cost, which seems to imply communication between the power sources and the Smart Appliance.
Communication with Smart Appliances by means of a data cable would require additional house wiring; therefore it may be concluded that such data communication should preferably be wireless, using, for example, Bluetooth, Zigbee or WiFi standards. However, in order to route power of a selected type to a Smart Appliance, the power installation needs to know to which breaker circuit the appliance is connected, which is not provided by existing wireless or wired methods. Therefore there is a need for a method of identifying the electrical circuit to which an appliance is connected; a need to define the features of a Smart Appliance and its interaction with “the Smart Grid” that could be of general interest and benefit to a user and which a wide variety of advanced electrical appliances could be designed to possess, and to devise some novel methods and systems for constructing, controlling and communicating with the same that provides new and tangible benefits. An addressable electrical outlet is described herein which can be used with a prior art appliance for the remote control of its power and/or for providing a local data connection to an appliance such as a computer or printer.